About Tamar Marie Boyadjian

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Dr. Tamar Marie Boyadjian is a poet and translator and teaches courses on medieval literature, poetry (analysis and composition), and translation (theory and practice).

 

She thinks of herself as a sound-shaper and a wandering ašuł. Her work is experimental, intertextual, and intercultural; and explores themes around movement, subjectivity, symbols and transmission - drawing from the threats imposed on endangered languages such as her native tongue Western Armenian.

 

She has published her poetry and translations widely in a number of literary journals, creative anthologies, and international volumes around the world. She is the editor of two out of the three extant anthologies of translation of contemporary Armenian literature into English: makukachu (Ingnakir, 2017), and unscripted: An Armenian Palimpsest [Absinthe: World Literature in Translation] (University of Michigan Press, 2017).

 

Her current projects include an anthology of poetry of Western Armenian women writers; a translation of Zabel Yesayan’s In the Waiting Room, for which she was awarded the IALA grant; and a translation with Dr. Maral Aktokmakyan and Dr. Rachel Goshgarian of Akabi Hikayetsi—the first known Armenian themed novel—from Armeno-Turkish to English. She is also currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of the Society for Armenian Studies.